Welcome to Beg to Differ, the Bullworks Weekly Roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum.

We range from center left to center right.

I'm Mona Charon, syndicated columnist and policy editor at the Bullwork, and I am joined by our regulars,

Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution and the Wall Street Journal, Damon Linger, who writes

the sub-stack newsletter, Notes from the Middle

Ground, and Linda Chavez of the Niskanin Center.

Our special guest this week is Matt Bennett.

Matt was an official in the Clinton White House, worked closely with former Vice President

Al Gore, and is a founder of Third Way.

Well, our first topic this week has to be the historic events on Capitol Hill.

For the first time in American history, a Speaker of the House has been ousted from his position and of course it was done by his own party.

So Matt I'm going to start with you and ask you this is evidence of a really very

frightening level of dysfunction in one of our major political parties.

But what do you think of the thesis

that Democrats should have saved him

for the sake of the country?

Some people are saying that.

Yeah, I don't really buy that. I understand the argument because what folks are saying is McCarthy

may be bad in the estimation of Democrats, but what you're going to get next will be worse.

It could be Jim Jordan, which is an unimaginable idea that Jim Jordan could be the

Speaker of the House, but I guess it is conceivable that that could happen.

The reason I don't buy that Democrats should have

...